Backwards Narratives

Looking Backwards to Find Forwards

“From the ground up” Paula Briggs

It’s so hard to know if the memories around an event help us see the event more clearly, or less clearly, than the original event. I’ve always thought this about holidays. It might be my personality type, but when I’m on holiday, I’m so busy planning, checking in with what is happening, thinking about what’s happening next (where we are eating, how we will get there etc etc), that I find it hard staying in the present. Added to that, the mind is busy reprogramming expectations of what you imagined the place to be like, with the reality in front of your eyes. But when I get back from the trip - days or weeks later - my sense of the specifics of the trip somehow solidifies, and I see each day for what it was. I carry the memory (or perhaps the essence) of it with more tenderness than I felt at the time. The worries, anxieties, plans, niggles… all stripped away to leave the day, the time and the place itself.

“Putting your own lifejacket on first” Paula Briggs

I’m beginning to wonder if the same goes for the work we make too.